AN ARTIST IN CRIME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 20538, 12 April 1930, Page 3 (Supplement)

AN ARTIST IN CRIME.

PRETTY YOUNG WOMAN-

CLEVER HOTEL THIEF*

A pretty young woman named Helen Doyle sat in the dock at a London court in February wearing a costly fur coat and heard a detective call her " one of the most persistent and clever hotel thieves in London." Her counsel said she was " bound to the chariot wheels of a band of international crooks." Doyle was convicted of receiving articles of jewellery worth £350 which were partly the proceeds of robberies from big West End hotels. She was sentenced to 18 months' imprisonment.

Detective-sergeant Welsby said that in 1925 Doyle was sentenced to 21 months' imprisonment on charges involving the theft of a tremendous quantity of jewellery from hotels in Kensington and the West End. • The woman, he said, had taken a, flat for which she paid £25 a quarter, unfurnished. Receipts for household expenditure totalling £554 were found there when she was arrested. She had also spent, a considerable sum on furniture. Her clothes were always bought at fashionable. West End establishments. She had bougfit two or three fur coats, and the one she was wearing in the dock had cost 39 guineas. " For more than two years the woman has been a tremendous source of trouble to the police, especially at Kensington," declared Sergeant Welsby. She has no associates and always uses taxicabs. Her method in all cases is to enter an hotel boldly as a guest, well dressed, as she always is. go to the top floors and enter rooms while the occupants are downstairs. On finding jewel cases or handbags she goes to the bathroom, locks herself in, extracts all the valuables, and walks out. " Our difficulty has been the descriptions given of the thief. Some had said they saw a blonde and others a brunette. This is accounted for by her wearing a false hair such as this." Witness produced two fair-coloured sidepieces, and explained that when worn under a hat gave the impression that Doyle was a blonde; without, them she was a. brunette. In April 1927. a jewel theft was committed at, a Kensington hotel, and a servant was suspected. Dovle, in an assumed name as a guest, had occupied the adjoining room to that of the victim, and although she denied all knowledge of the theft, sh Q disappeared after being interrogated Ihe total value of the property in thefts attributed to her was between £4OOO and £SOOO.